The Hawa Mahal, or Palace of the Winds, Jeypoor.

Photograph from an album of 80 albumen prints taken by Eugene Clutterbuck Impey. Maharaja Sawai Jai Singh of Amber felt he needed a large capital befitting his status, and built a new city in 1727 to fulfil this need. In 1728 he transferred his capital from Amber to this city of Jaipur. Unusually for a Rajput capital, Jaipur was built on a plain and to a square plan, its streets meeting at right angles. The Hawa Mahal (or Palace of Winds) is the most famous of Jaipur's many palaces, built in 1799 as an addition to the City Palace by Pratap Singh. The unique silhouette of its eastern facade (seen in the picture) functioned as a screen through which the ladies of the palace could watch the processions in the street below and catch the breeze. The five-storey pyramidal structure has numerous finely-screened bay windows

placed close together, 593 in all, giving the palace a honeycomb effect. The shallow architectural relief details are picked out in white, forming a contrast to the overall ground of pink-wash.